Wash your mouth out

I bought new soap last Monday. I bought new liquid soap, Pam's Vanilla Moisturising Handwash liquid soap.

Fuck I wish I hadn't.

Now, I have never been allergic to much at all, I can eat anything, I can touch anything and I can take pretty much anything except penicillin. Raewyn got the allergies; mushrooms, perfumes, MSG and stuff like that. A lift ride with a perfumed woman can make her feel bloody awful.

One hour after using this new soap on Tuesday, my hands got a bit itchy. Then a bit more itchy. My ears itched, too, on the backs and in the crease. And then my hands got hot with red patches that felt tight and hard, and more itchy too,but running them under the cold tap helped. A lot.



As I was getting into bed, I noticed a bite, I thought Tommy had brought some friends home and left them in my bed. Cats do stuff like that, it's a control thing. Anyway, soon I realised he must have brought home the entire flea population for the Tauranga area, until I noticed they were hives, not fleas and they were now spreading. All places were places I could likely touch, my arms, my legs, behind my ears.



Turning into an itchy red blob isn't my first choice for fun and I spent the night getting up and down, dousing the hives with cold water while cooling the burning in my hands under the tap. At 7.30am, I doused all of me under a cold shower and wandered over to Shari's in search of a bottle of Pinetarsol to dab on, well, it felt like nearly everywhere (luckily, every bit of it was within reach.). She gave me some Claratyne medicine as well.

The day wore on, the hives disappeared quickly but my hands began to swell, and the pain was deep inside, not just on the surface. I couldn't hold my crutch properly, when we went out; it hurt too much. They swelled a bit more. By bedtime they were very bad and I took plenty of painkillers in tandem with one of the Claramax tablets that Adam found in the medicine box. I would have crossed my fingers for a good night's sleep if it hadn't hurt too much to move them. Night #2 was very much worse, so bad that it encouraged me to go off to the doctor after sitting in my chair at 6am wishing I could hold a steering wheel and drive myself to E.D. But before I went anywhere, I emailed Pam's Products and asked them what ingredient is in this shit that isn't in their other stuff. Their email back said "styrene/acrylates".



So I went to the doc. I got The Man's locum, who said it was one hell of an allergic reaction. I agreed with her. She gave me more anti-histamines, sedating ones to allow some sleep, and a huge tube of steroid cream and by 11 last night (night #3), I was too tired and doped up to stay awake. I slept until 10 this morning and woke to two hands that felt like they once more belonged to me.

I started looking on Google for some info about this styrene/acrylates stuff. It's very enlightening. Here a patent for this stuff says:

Suitable film forming polymers include those that, upon drying, produce a substantially continuous coating or film on the hair, skin, or nails. Nonexclusive examples of suitable film forming polymers include acrylamidopropyl trimonium chloride/acrylamide copolymer; corn starch/acrylamide/sodium acrylate copolymer; polyquaternium 10; polyquaternium 47; polyvinylmethyl/maleic anhydride copolymer; styrene/acrylates copolymers; and mixtures thereof.

It's used as a surfactant. In fact, it's used in a few products. It's in Palmer's Cocoa Butter. It's used in laser jet printer toner. As a screenprinter, Ian used to use it in a solid form. It's used as a primer/sealer, a calming milk bath for baby, a high performance wood-filler and Avon Extreme Volume Flexicoat Maximizing Mascara. It's also in Dove Cream Wash and Dove Fresh Touch Body Wash. All perfectly good reasons not to buy any of those products.

They also put it in my soap and all I can think of is "why?". Isn't the rest of that shit up there enough? I haven't even started on researching the rest of it, but suffice to say I won't be buying any more liquid soap with this stuff in, and hope like hell no-one I know does either. I'm very glad I didn't get any on my face or in my mouth.

That whole allergy thing is wayyyyy too expensive.

Adam washed the bottle for me yesterday afternoon so I could handle it to read the label; within minutes I had hives starting again. Why the hell do we put this shit on ourselves? It's almost as bad as parents using Frontline on their kids for nits. Almost.